Klingons, Honour and Cloaking Devices.

A thought came to me a while ago; the Klingons (at least from TNG onwards) place a big emphasis on honour and strength. So does anyone else find it odd that they make use of cloaking devices? Invisibility seems to run at odds with the idea of honourable combat.

Welllll..... since cloaking technology requires so much energy to maintain it's impossible to fire weapons or raise shields whilst cloaked (altho there are exceptions to this as has been seen), it's justifiable that they never actually do battle whilst using their cloaking devices.

Also, they're not restrained from cloaking technology like the Federation is with the Treaty of Algeron. So you can assume that they don't have to not have it either.

The Klingons obtained cloaking technology from the Romulans at a time when they were allies. Considering the modern Klingon view of Romulans, that would seem to indicate that the technology could also be considered dishonorable. However, as TiM said, they would never attack while cloaked, which is something the Romulans would have no problem doing.

Yeah... but General Chang was a Klingon who quoted Shakespere. 'nuf said.

Altho that being said, Chang's ship as well as the Scimitar from Nemesis are the only two cases I know of ships that could fire whilst still remaining cloaked. So the choice of doing so isn't really an option.

If anything though, the vibes I get from the show is that Klingon ships use their cloaking technology a lot less than Romulans, probably only when stealth would serve a more useful purpose (ie surveillance and the likes)